PS.SCREEN | Machines

For the May edition of PS.Screen, we are pleased to show an acclaimed documentary directed by Rahul Jain. Departing from themes of the current exhibition, A beast, a god, and a line, the film was selected to give an insight into the present-day conditions of labour in the textile industry in India.

Since the 1960s, the area of Sachin, Gujarat has undergone unprecedented, unregulated industrialisation exemplified in its numerous textile factories. Jain presents an intimate portrayal of the life and work in just one of these factories. Moving through the bowels of the enormous and disorientating structure, the camera takes the viewer on a journey to a place of dehumanising physical labor and intense hardship, bringing attention to the persisting pre-industrial working conditions and the huge disparity and alienation between the maker of a product and its buyer.

About the director

Rahul Jain (b. New Delhi) recently graduated with a BFA in Film and Video and is presently pursuing a Writing M.A in Aesthetics and Politics. He is interested in distance, otherness and the everyday. Machines is Jain’s debut production, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.